Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[celedhring]

Re the SNP being like the Tories in Westminster, but worse and somehow progressive. I mentioned it before but history professors are again complaining that the new unit on the Atlantic slave trade as part of the curriculum for standard grades (exams at 16) includes looking at the impact on British ports like Bristol and Liverpool.

But no mention of Glasgow - which imported more tobacco than all other ports in the UK combined. I'd also add that over 30% of plantation owners in the Caribbean were Scottish and Campbell is a more common surname in Jamaica than Scotland.

Hard to see it as anything but narrative/myth-making by the SNP - and, sadly, looking at the response online lots of people pointing out that they are "unionist" historians

If it was Westminster there'd be a full-blown multi-day scandal about this. Because it's Scotland and the SNP and Sturgeon, it gets a little coverage (mainly in right-wing papers) and most people don't know/ignore it.

Edit: Oh and separately there's problems getting essential supplies to the Hebrides due to problems with the ferries, which are supposed to be replaced but the company that won the contract (over the objections of the nationalised ferry operator) is years behind schedule and overbudget - lots of allegations around corruption and cronyism though. As I say Holyrood's like Westminster but worse because it gets less scrutiny from the press.

That happens around here too. Catalans were very significant slave-traders and many fortunes were built on slave work in Cuba, but it's been quite silenced in history curriculums.

[Sheilbh]

There's been other stuff - they had to revise the history curriculum after it turned out it included lots of false stories that had circulated on nationalist blogs about how the English government (and Winston Churchill personally!) sent in English troops into crush Red Clydeside. In reality it was Glasgow council and Lord Provost who sent in Scottish troops. But that's just normal nationalist grievance-making.

Similarly I always wonder how they teach the Highland Clearances now because when I learned about it in a Scottish school it was very much a "blame the landowners" approach who were both English and Scottish - I wonder if that's shifted.

Whitewashing a subject like slavery just seems a lot more distasteful - and I just don't know how you can realistically do that when you've got Glasgow with it's Merchant Quarter and that it was the Second City of Empire

[Valmy]

There's been other stuff - they had to revise the history curriculum after it turned out it included lots of false stories that had circulated on nationalist blogs about how the English government (and Winston Churchill personally!) sent in English troops into crush Red Clydeside. In reality it was Glasgow council and Lord Provost who sent in Scottish troops. But that's just normal nationalist grievance-making.

Similarly I always wonder how they teach the Highland Clearances now because when I learned about it in a Scottish school it was very much a "blame the landowners" approach who were both English and Scottish - I wonder if that's shifted.

Whitewashing a subject like slavery just seems a lot more distasteful - and I just don't know how you can realistically do that when you've got Glasgow with it's Merchant Quarter and that it was the Second City of Empire

I think othering a large population next door, and who live amongst you, as evil enemies is worse than whitewashing shit from 200 years ago but that's just me.

Anyway they both serve exactly the same purpose: creating the holy pure Scottish people and making everything complicated a corruption from evil foreigners.

[Sheilbh]

I think othering a large population next door, and who live amongst you, as evil enemies is worse than whitewashing shit from 200 years ago but that's just me.

I mean that's par for the course for England - rare when it's not justified though (and I think Irish politics is taking a turn on that as well with the rise of Sinn Fein). I mean it's also the basis of most sporting rivalries

I lived in Scotland, I go very regularly and I'm English. We're not a perilously othered minority. It's just like having an English accent in Ireland, or being a Yankee in Latin America: absolutely fine (although don't go around shouting "no surrender" etc).

Edit: I suppose I don't mind a bit of historical shit-flinging and if England/Britain can't take it then we're in trouble because we deserve it more than most. I find the denial or hiding of historic responsibility really wrong and morally problematic - especially when, as with empire and slavery, it is part of why Britain and Scotland are wealthy now. It shapes the fabric of our historic trading cities, including Glasgow.

Anyway they both serve exactly the same purpose: creating the holy pure Scottish people and making everything complicated a corruption from evil foreigners.

No - I mean it's not blood and soil nationalism. It's the history of always the victim and a little bit Hollywood - the baddie's always a southern posh Englishman.

I also think the Red Clydeside stuff was a genuine mistake. There was an entire industry of websites about this "unknown" history. It's only when it popped up in the curriculum that historians rallied and pushed back against it as bullshit having previously, probably been unaware of what was on the internet. The other irony is that the participants in Red Clydeside would see no difference between the English landowner and capitalists v the Scottish ones (and Glasgow was, historically, fairly anti-nationalist because Scottish nationalism until the 90s had a sectarian streak).

[celedhring]

Whitewashing a subject like slavery just seems a lot more distasteful - and I just don't know how you can realistically do that when you've got Glasgow with it's Merchant Quarter and that it was the Second City of Empire

Yeah, one of the sources of Catalan prosperity in the XIXth was Cuba. Many Catalan cities are littered with "Indian houses", luxury propoerties built in the XIXth century by those who made their fortune in Cuba (known as "Indians"), and it was hard to not make yourself rich there without being involved with slavery. Many of these fortunes then funded the Catalan industrial revolution and Barcelona's cultural explosion (Gaudí's patron was from an "Indian" family, and had married the daughter of a known slave-trader). It's something that we've never come to terms with, and then people are shocked when suddenly this or that statue from a rich patron of the arts in Barcelona has to be removed because it has surfaced he was involved with slavery.  It's damn time we come to terms with that, but will never happen with nationalists in charge.

Fun fact, one of the most popular Catalan folk songs is about the Cuban War of Independence ("My father went to Cuba") and the chorus is "It was all the Americans fault!" 

[Richard Hakluyt]

When discussing history with a Scotsman I have always found it far more likely to turn unpleasant than a conversation with an Irishman...which is crazy 

[HVC]

I blame braveheart.

[Josquius]

I've ran into the red Clyde stuff before. It is a bizzare thing that cybernats go off on, like Glasgow was the only place in the UK that ever faced this kind of thing?

[Sheilbh]

I've ran into the red Clyde stuff before. It is a bizzare thing that cybernats go off on, like Glasgow was the only place in the UK that ever faced this kind of thing?

The cyberbats are really unpleasant and a foreshadowing of what Brexit divisions were like - except there the grievance hasn't died so it's still a going concern rather than easing back into more normal politics.

I see a Scottish Tory constituency office was vandalised and spray painted with a big letter Q (for Quisling). There's a few stories that remind me of the way Charles Kennedy and his family were hounded in the 2015 election, which was disgraceful. It seems to be taking a turn for the worse with Sturgeon and the SNP ramping up the rhetoric for a second referendum.

[Josquius]

I've ran into the red Clyde stuff before. It is a bizzare thing that cybernats go off on, like Glasgow was the only place in the UK that ever faced this kind of thing?

The cyberbats are really unpleasant and a foreshadowing of what Brexit divisions were like - except there the grievance hasn't died so it's still a going concern rather than easing back into more normal politics.

I see a Scottish Tory constituency office was vandalised and spray painted with a big letter Q (for Quisling). There's a few stories that remind me of the way Charles Kennedy and his family were hounded in the 2015 election, which was disgraceful. It seems to be taking a turn for the worse with Sturgeon and the SNP ramping up the rhetoric for a second referendum.

Its interesting I find that Cybernats and Quitlings see each other as their polar opposite, yet so many of the tactics and behaviours are absolutely identical. Pointing this out to them is quite interesting, huge cognitive dissonance that no, those that question nationalism are the real nationalists.

[Zanza]

Truss economics policy is not very convincing.

[crazy canuck]

She has a policy?

[Josquius]

Such cuts at the best of times are an error.
When we're entering a crippling recession...

And this free port stuff pisses me off so much. People just don't get what it really means and that its basically just shifting jobs around.

[Sheilbh]

Such cuts at the best of times are an error.
When we're entering a crippling recession...

I can see a case for cutting national insurance or at least cancelling the rise. It's got a lower threshold than income tax, higher earners don't pay higher marginal rates and it's only income from work so pensioners etc are excluded. It disproportionately hits young people and low to average paid workers.

I didnt' think it was a good tax to raise and I think it's probably a pretty good one to freeze or cut. Of course that cut is nowhere near enough to help people with cost of living and Sunak's absolutely right people will need handouts despite what Truss is saying.

[Sheilbh]

Norway looking at rationing and export bans on energy which will be a very big deal for us this winter - especially given our lack of gas storage, declining old nuclear plants and new ones not yet online. Starting to feel like operating on a "just in time" model for energy might have been a bad idea - and thinking we should probably be looking at rationing now (although I suppose it makes no difference if we've got nowhere to store it).

And due to the very dry hot summer talk of hosepipe bans again etc in the South-East. Just a periodic reminder that the UK government's been looking to build a new reservoir since 1991 - I think that was just because of projected population growth and not also climate impact. But bluntly I can't think of a better example of the failure of the British state over the last 30 years than this country running out of water

Edit: And on British Twitter there's a clip doing the rounds of Nick Clegg in 2010 saying the reason nuclear power wasn't a solution is because it wouldn't come online until 2020-21 which is far too late to be helpful. The Lib Dems blocked it in the coalition - we built lots of renewables but not much else as a base power and we shut down gas storage.

Incidentally that feels like a Lib Dem/Green strategy with infrastructure - make so many local objections and difficulties and mandatory consultations with stakeholders etc that it takes over a decade to build and then say you oppose it because it'll take too long